Andrew Brown, the executive director of Enterprise and IoT Research at Strategy Analytics, interviews Telit executives Bill Dykas, the product manager for IoT Platforms, and Ricardo Buranello, the global vice president of sales for IoT Factory Solutions, to discuss what the company is doing in IoT and how it is addressing the needs of its customers

Andrew Brown: As one of the leading IoT hardware and software vendors for more than 20 years, can you give us insight into what Telit customers are looking for from an IoT solution and how has it changed?

Bill Dykas: Telit is a highly diversified company. We have many different technologies for supporting customers around IoT; including hardware modules to help customers wirelessly connect their IoT applications, with technology including 2G, 3G, 4G, Cat M1, NB IoT, to short range such as Bluetooth and ZigBee to Wi-Fi, LoRa, Sigfox, GPS and GNSS. This gives us a deep view of the industry and we now have more than 7,000 customers using our technology. On top of the hardware, we have our software and services business and are a global MVNO. We approach this industry from multiple angles, from companies that are building consumer goods, to tracking devices and smart meters, to security systems/smart home alarms, through to the industrial IoT where companies are integrating IoT on the shop floor in large enterprises.

In the last 10-15 years, the market has changed dramatically. Around 15 years ago, the market was highly concentrated among fewer players, while today the market is highly fragmented. For example, our revenue comes from seven thousand customers, not a few. This is going to be the reality for IoT for a long time. Larger companies are trying to innovate or develop products using IoT concepts, or sell the benefits of IoT based on new revenue generation or reduced costs. Consolidation is happening in the IoT market, as larger companies are investing in this space.

The exposure that these companies have brought to IoT, coupled with our experience in the industry, will help us expand our presence in the market. In terms of our deployments, the efficiency and relative return on investment is clear.

AB: What companies is Telit working with to bring solutions to market? Why are strategic partnerships so important when you are a customer looking at deploying an IoT solution?

RB: Partnerships are critical to helping fuel our future growth in the IoT market. We have many examples of important partnerships, but some of our key partners include SAP, TechMahindra, Wind River, Cisco and Mitsubishi. SAP offers our software platform to their customers. We work closely with SAP to offer our technology to every customer with whom SAP is engaged. We offer our device management to their customers to simplify IoT data collection and normalisation and quickly send that data to target SAP databases and business applications. It allows customers to fully integrate things with web-based solutions, mobile apps and enterprise systems. For example, a car manufacturing production line has multiple machines that connect […]

Powercast Corporation, the provider of radio-frequency (RF)-based long-range power-over-distance wireless charging technology, announced that it will unveil at CES its FCC-approved (Part 15, FCC ID: YESTX91503) and ISED-approved (Canada IC: 8985A-TX91503) three-watt PowerSpot transmitter which works in the far field(up to 80 feet) for over-the-air charging of multiple devices – no charging mats or direct line of sight needed.

Powercast used the experience it gained powering industrial and commercial devices with its initial Powercaster® transmitter (FCC and ISED approved in 2010) to develop the new smaller, smarter and less expensive PowerSpot transmitter specifically for the consumer market. The PowerSpot is the industry’s first long-range, far-field, power-over-distance wireless recharging transmitter for consumer devices to gain FCC and ISED approval.

How Powercast’s patented remote wireless charging technology works

Creating a coverage area like Wi-Fi, a Powercast transmitter automatically charges enabled devices when within range. The transmitter uses the 915-MHz ISM band to send RF energy to a tiny Powercast receiver chip embedded in a device, which converts it to direct current (DC) to directly power or recharge that device’s batteries.

Powercast will begin production of its standalone PowerSpot charger now that it is FCC approved and is also offering a PowerSpot subassembly that consumer goods manufacturers can integrate into their own products.

Powercast is in discussions with several manufacturers, and has inked deals with two household names, since releasing a wireless power development kit in early 2017 containing the PowerSpot subassembly.

“Consumer electronics manufacturers can now confidently build our FCC-approved technology into their wireless charging ecosystems, and offer their customers convenient far-field charging where devices charge over the air from a power source without needing direct contact, like inductive charging requires, or near direct contact, like magnetic resonance requires,” said Powercast’s COO/CTO Charles Greene, Ph.D.

The company’s vision is to enable long-range, true wireless charging where consumers simply place all Powercast-enabled devices for charging within range of a PowerSpot in their home or a public place.

“Others might be talking RF power possibilities, but we have consistently delivered far-field wireless power solutions that work, safely and responsibly, under FCC and other global standards providing power up to 80 feet,” said Greene. “Our robust technology has capabilities beyond today’s permitted standards, so our product releases will evolve as regulations do.”

The PowerSpot creates an overnight charging zone of up to 80 feet free of wires or charging mats

Enabled devices charge when in range, but don’t need direct line of sight to the PowerSpot. Powercast expects up to 30 devices left in the zone on a countertop or desktop overnight can charge by morning, sharing the transmitter’s three-watt (EIRP) power output. Charging rates will vary with distance, type and power consumption of a device.

TX91503 – PowerSpot Transmitter

Power-hungry, heavily used devices like game controllers, smart watches, fitness bands, hearing aids, ear buds, or headphones charge best up to two feet away; keyboards and mice up to six feet away; TV […]

Today marks a momentous milestone for the wireless industry: the finalisation of the 3GPP Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G New Radio (NR) Standard. The formalisation of the NSA standard anchors the coming Standalone (SA) version and represents a remarkable step forward for the industry.

With NSA 5G NR, players across the ecosystem for the first time have rallied around a single internationally recognised specification for 5G radio systems. It provides the technological foundation for the industry to begin testing and commercialising the next generation of wireless services and devices, says Asha Keddy of Intel.

I’d like to congratulate the parties that contributed to the development of this standard, setting the foundation for an interoperable global marketplace ripe with economic opportunity and technological possibility. As I commented in the related news release, Intel participated in the process, working closely with mobile industry leaders to support the standard and accelerate the first NR trials.

Many of the early use cases will fall into the realms of enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as Vehicle-to-Everything Communications (V2X). Intel has already been innovating in many of these segments, conducting field trials with the Intel 5G Mobile Trial Platform (MTP) and the Intel GO 5G Automotive Platform. To prepare for the specification finalisation, we have to be two to three years ahead of the standards when it comes to gathering key learnings about use cases and their related performance requirements.

Intel is proud to have contributed to the development of NSA 5G NR with proprietary research, reference designs and insights from a range of trials. Intel’s many contributions spanned the specification, including coding, error correction, modulation, spatial sub-channelisation, beamforming, reference symbol designs, radio link adaptation and more. Intel also produced prototypes for use in the testing of pre-5G standards, including 5GTF.

Those system stacks were, in essence, the parents of NSA and SA 5G NR – providing evidence of what was possible and informing the standard’s specifications. During this process, we collaborated with industry innovators like Ericsson and Nokia, and leading operators like AT&T, Korea Telecom, NTT Docomo and Verizon.

We’ve rapidly evolved our MTP in lockstep with progress of the NR specification, preparing it for the finalisation of the standard. It’s NSA 5G NR-ready, giving equipment manufacturers the platform they need to test interoperability and operators the ability to simulate real-world use cases. Powered by high-performance Intel FPGAs and Intel® Core™ processors, the MTP will have a key role in informing the pending SA standard within Release 15 in June 2018.

We already have several NSA 5G NR trials lined up using the MTP alongside our 5G RFIC supporting sub-6 GHz and mmWave, and our 5G RFFE for operations in the 28 GHz and 39 GHz bands. The learnings from our interoperability testing and real-world trials are foundational for our first commercial NSA/SA 5G NR-capable multimode solutions, the Intel® XMM™ 8000 series modem, with customer devices expected in 2019. These solutions will support a variety of use cases, including PCs, mobile phones, fixed wireless CPE and even vehicles.

Of course, it’s important to remember that as momentous as this occasion is, it’s really just […]

International fleet management application provider, DRVR has selected Tata Communications as its global IoT connectivity partner to help achieve its objective of making Asia’s vehicle fleets the smartest and most cost-efficient in the world.

The advent of connected vehicles has led to an exponential increase in consumption and creation of human to machine interface applications and solutions. A Forrester report on the Internet of Things states that fleet management and its applications in transportation and logistics across retail and wholesale will be the hottest areas for IoT growth. The Asia Pacific automotive telematics market is expected to reach a value of US$ 15,248 million by 2020 at an estimated CAGR of 11.6% during the forecast period.

Vehicles in fleets using DRVR technology have been fitted with Tata Communications’ MOVE-IOT Connect™ SIM technology. The sensors transmit data collected in real-time using Tata Communications’ MOVE, which seamlessly connects services using the best available local cellular network. The DRVR application then processes and analyses this data, turning it into actionable intelligence further illustrating fleet performance metrics on any device, mobile or laptop.

This means that faster and better informed decisions can be made as fleet managers have a more holistic view of everything that is happening across the fleet, communicating updates in real time; on a highly secure infrastructure ultimately leading to more effective and robust operations on the ground.

David Henderson, co-founder and CEO, DRVR said: “Our partnership with Tata Communications enables us to overcome two major challenges in our quest to create smarter fleets across our entire geographical footprint. First, rather than negotiate multiple contracts with individual service providers, our entire international IoT network is managed through Tata Communications.

As a result, we get valuable visibility of data collected across borders so that we can realise the benefits of smarter fleet management. Second, it allows us a holistic view on a singular dashboard allowing us to respond with improved accuracy and eliminating downtime almost entirely.”

Tata Communications’ MOVE service will be rolled out to DRVR customers through its smart fleet management applications. Tata Communications MOVE is part of the company’s long-term strategy for its mobility services portfolio and its vision of creating an access and usage agnostic, cross-border mobile experience for people and things.

The platform is underpinned by Tata Communications’ global network and partnerships with several hundred mobile communications service providers globally. The service enables DRVR to roam across different service providers in any of its covered regions without having to negotiate agreements with multiple providers or pay extra fees.

This is the eighth year we measure IPv6 on the Christmas Goat. And with the crazy climate we have to live in now where there is no snow on the goat or ground… (If you want to remember the crazy snow storm from 1998, watch this.) But IPv6 is doing better than the climate this year. This year we increased from 27% 2016 to 40% 2017. In Sweden Tele2, Tre and Comhem are still the only major ISPs with IPv6 enabled. Tele2 (with IPv6 since ~three years) and Tre is mostly mobile operators, and Comhem has enabled IPv6 in their Docsis network.

But this three only get up to 10% by themselves and the other 30% is mostly from outside Sweden.

You see what the line is approaching, next year we easily break the 50% barrier! 🙂

In Sweden the IPv6 traffic increased from 4% to 6% this year according to Google measurements. That’s a great increase but we still have much to do. I have done some articles (in Swedish but with Google translate link at the bottom) about our own problem the first of which is here (Why Internet in Sweden is broken).

And Google’s worldwide measurements show an increase from ~15% 2016 to ~23% in 2017.

Have a happy and good IPv6 year during 2018 and I hope I can do the measurement 2018 too!

Berg Insight, the M2M/IoT market research provider, released new findings about the market for cellular M2M terminals. About 4.9 million cellular M2M terminals were shipped globally during 2016, an increase of 28.0% from the previous year.

Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.8%, this number is expected to reach 13.7 million in 2022. Berg Insight defines cellular terminals as standalone devices intended for connecting M2M applications to a cellular network. These include primarily general-purpose cellular routers, gateways and modems that are enclosed in a chassis and have at least one input/output port. Trackers, telematics devices and other specialised devices are excluded from this report.

North American and Asian vendors dominate the global cellular M2M terminal market. Cradlepoint, Sierra Wireless and Digi International are the largest vendors in North America, whilst SIMCom is the main manufacturer on the Asian market. Combined, these four vendors generated close to US$ 415 million (€349.15 million) in revenues from M2M terminal sales during 2016. This is equivalent to nearly 50% of the global market.

A large number of small and medium sized vendors are active on the European market, whilst the North American market is dominated by a handful of major vendors, largely due to barriers in the form of carrier certifications required for cellular devices in the region.

“Adoption of 4G LTE in cellular routers, gateways and modems have increased rapidly in recent time due to increased focus on product life cycle costs and decommissioning of 2G networks”, said Fredrik Stålbrand, IoT analyst, Berg Insight. He adds that two thirds of the cellular M2M terminals sold globally during 2017 used 4G LTE as the main standard.

“LPWA technologies such as LTE Cat M1 and NB-IoT are expected to ease the transition from 2G to LTE networks further”, continued Mr. Stålbrand. In 2017, introductions of cellular M2M terminals featuring LTE Cat M1 and NB-IoT technologies were made by Encore Networks, Maestro Wireless and MultiTech Systems and several vendors plan to launch new products with LPWA connectivity during 2018.

At this time of year every editor is drowning in predictions for the year ahead. To be honest, I prefer more solid information, says Jeremy Cowan. There is so much enterprise restructuring going on that we’re frantically busy with hard facts in the inter-related worlds of security, billing, car charging, and data management.

Thales CEO goes off ‘merger’ script announcing Gemalto acquisition

The week got off to a bang with Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) and Gemalto (Euronext Amsterdam and Paris: GTO) agreeing to merge.

Patrice Caine, Thales’s chairman and CEO, said: “The acquisition of Gemalto marks a key milestone in the implementation of Thales’s strategy. Together with Gemalto’s management, we have big ambitions based on a shared vision of the digital transformation of our industries and customers. We have a tremendous respect for Gemalto’s technological achievements, and … I welcome warmly Gemalto’s 15,000 employees to our Group. By combining our talents, Thales and Gemalto are creating a global leader in digital security.”

Over the past three years, Thales has significantly increased its focus on digital technologies, investing over €1 billion in connectivity, cybersecurity, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), in particular with the acquisition of Sysgo, Vormetric and Guavus. The integration of Gemalto is expected to accelerate this strategy, reinforcing Thales’s digital offering, across its five vertical markets (aeronautics, space, ground transportation, defence and security). Altogether, this new business unit will represent approximately 20% of Group revenues and rank among the top three players worldwide, with €3.5 billion revenues in the fast growing digital security market.

Combined with Gemalto’s digital security portfolio, Thales will be able to offer an end-to-end solution, to secure the full critical digital decision chains, from data creation in sensors to real-time decision-making. Clients are facing data security challenges in all sectors, including telcos, governments, banks, utilities, and other industries.

Thales will combine its digital businesses into Gemalto, which will continue to operate under its own brand as one of the seven Thales global business units. Philippe Vallée, Gemalto’s erstwhile CEO, will lead the combined digital security business.

The deal is a recommended all-cash offer for all issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Gemalto, for a price of €51.00 per share cum dividend.

It’s not just enterprises that are repositioning themselves, entire countries are refocusing their business models. Norway is well-known as a global leader in renewable energy, having launched an initiative in 2016 to power all cars with renewable energy by 2025.

As part of this process, the country now wants to provide car owners with easy access to charging stations through housing co-operatives. In a new project, Smartly will encourage Norwegians to use of community chargers and move towards electric car usage by 2025.

With help from Capgemini, and its subsidiary Sogeti, Microsoft is now to build Smartly a cloud connected multi-platform mobile app. Using its expertise in cloud-native technology and its commitment to create measurable digital customer experiences, Smartly said it has moved from a proof-of-concept to a working app in […]

YOPI, innovative wearable digital fitness companion, announce recently that its equity crowdfunding campaign has already successfully raised over $160,000 in the first campaign week, more than 15% of the campaign $1.07 million target. YOPI already has a patented, working prototype and the funds will be used to finalize development and start production. YOPI, is here […]

The ICANN org is today announcing that it will not roll the root zone KSK in the first quarter of 2018.

We have decided that we do not yet have enough information to set a specific date for the rollover. We want to make clear, however, that the ICANN org is committed to rolling the root zone KSK and we will continue to discuss this important process with the community, gather their feedback and give all interested parties advance notice of at least one calendar quarter when we set the date for the rollover.

Furthermore, we are soliciting input from the community to help determine, if possible, appropriate objective criteria to measure the possible negative impact of the root KSK rollover on Internet users, and acceptable values for those criteria before a rollover. This is in accordance with the bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model that has been so successful for ICANN policy development.

On 27 September 2017, the ICANN org announced it was postponing the root zone KSK rollover for at least one quarter, leaving open the possibility the root KSK rollover might occur in the first quarter of 2018. We have since realized that our analysis and preparation will require additional time.

In a previous post, we described our analysis of recursive resolver trust anchor configuration information reported using the protocol defined in RFC 8145, Signaling Trust Anchor Knowledge in DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). Our analysis revealed that about 4% of the approximately 12,000 DNSSEC-validating resolvers reporting during the month of September 2017 were configured with only KSK-2010 (the shorthand for the current root KSK) and would have been unable to resolve DNS queries after the rollover occurred.

The ICANN org’s decision to postpone the rollover was based on the concern that we did not understand why those resolvers were not properly configured, and we needed time to investigate.

Since then, we have attempted to contact the operators of 500 addresses that had reported a resolver configuration with only KSK-2010 instead of the correct configuration of both KSK-2010 and the new KSK, KSK-2017. Ideally, that investigation would have revealed a set of clear causes for the improper configuration, allowing further communication and actions to be targeted at addressing those specific issues. But in the end, the analysis was not as conclusive as we would have hoped.

In our initial attempt, we received a response from operators of approximately 20% of the 500 addresses. Of those addresses whose operators we could contact, 60% came from address ranges known to host devices with dynamic addresses, such as routers of home broadband users and ephemeral virtual machines, making these resolvers extremely difficult (if not impossible) to track down. About 25% of the addresses corresponded to a resolver forwarding on behalf of another resolver that was reporting only KSK-2010. Since the address of the device reporting the incorrect configuration was not the actual source resolver, it is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to identify the true source address of the resolver that was reporting only KSK-2010.

To proceed with the root KSK rollover, the ICANN org must have confidence that the rollover will not have an unacceptable negative impact on Internet users. The challenge we have encountered since we began to analyze the RFC 8145 trust anchor configuration reports from resolvers is assessing the impact on users.

We can make a number of assumptions: for example, it is unlikely that a recursive resolver running at a dynamic address could support a large number of users since it does not offer a stable address for any devices to send queries to for resolution. But ultimately, determining potential user impact based on the data available to us is difficult and we are therefore soliciting the community’s input.

Input and discussion on acceptable criteria for proceeding with the KSK roll will take place on an existing email list that is already being used for discussion of the root KSK rollover. We encourage anyone interested in contributing to join the mailing list by visiting the web page here.

The ICANN org will monitor this mailing list and beginning on 15 January 2018, we will develop a draft plan for proceeding with the root KSK roll based on the input received and discussion on the mailing list. The plan will be published by 31 January 2018 and undergo a formal ICANN public comment process to gather further input. We will hold a session at ICANN61 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, to discuss the plan and hear from the community in person. Our intent is to have a revised plan available for community review and public comment prior to ICANN62 in Panama City, Panama, with a final plan published soon thereafter.

Throughout the process we’ll continue to keep the community updated on the root KSK rollover project’s progress.

It had to happen sooner or later: The two biggest tech stories of 2017–foreign cyber attacks and bitcoin–have come together perfectly in a single story. Namely, it looks like the infamous North Korean hacking outfit, The Lazarus Group, is running a spear-phishing campaign aimed at executives of cryptocurrency companies.

You may remember this gang from previous outrages such as the WannaCry ransomware outbreak, the hacking of Sony, and the $81 million cyber-heist from the Bangladesh Central Bank. Their latest scam, identified by Secureworks, involves sending emails about a Chief Financial Officer position that contain an infected Microsoft Word document.

As ZDNet reports, clicking on the document triggers a piece of malware that allows the attacker access to the victim’s computer. It’s unclear if any of the targeted executives have fallen for the phish or if the scheme has yielded the Lazarus Group any bitcoins. Let’s hope not–in part because crypto-currency companies know the risk of cyber-threats better than most, and should not be hiring people who click on random Word documents.

More broadly, the idea of North Korea phishing for bitcoin is intriguing because the phenomenon is at once so new and so old. It’s new because countries until very recently didn’t even take bitcoin seriously–and now, as the price of a bitcoin tops $18,000, rogue nations are telling their militaries to go forth and steal it.

At the same time, though, North Korea’s phishing antics can also be seen as a twist on the centuries-old military tactic known as privateering. Once upon a time, this tactic took the form of kings and queens granting letters of marque that allowed privateers to roam the oceans and plunder booty from enemy merchant ships. Today, North Korea is allowing its hackers to operate as digital privateers in search of crypto plunder like bitcoin.

This modern version of privateering is not as exciting as grand naval battles with cannons and cutlasses, but no doubt it’s just as lucrative. Have a good weekend.

THREATS

Bailing on Blockchain: In theory, it sounds great to create a coalition and build a distributed ledger tool for everyone. The reality is more messy: more than 15 members of the Hyperledger Project recently bailed and/or cut off their funds to the much-hyped blockchain project. This follows a similar break-up at R3, the blockchain-for-banks consortium.

Cutting off Kaspersky: The popular anti-virus product is tangled up with a good part of the US government’s IT systems–a big problem since the software maker is strongly suspected of ties to the Kremlin. The White House has hurried up efforts to cashier Kaspersky with an order banning its use anywhere in the government.

Creepy Keyboards: Key-logging software, which lets a third party record what you type, is a popular tool among spies and hackers–it’s not something you want pre-installed on your new computer. Yet that’s what HP did with hundreds of lap-top models. A security researcher discovered that anyone with administrative privileges could activate it. HP is working on a fix.

Easy there, Anderson: The normally bland Twitter account of CNN host Anderson Cooper spat out a string of abuse at Donald Trump in a tweet this week. The network portrayed it as a hack, pointing out that Anderson was in a different city from where the tweet was sent–the latest is that Anderson’s aide left a phone with the Twitter account unattended at the gym.

Feds Nail Mirai Miscreants: Remember that nasty botnet composed of hijacked IoT devices that took down servers across the east cost last year? Well, it turns out Brian Krebs was right: a Rutgers student running a Minecraft scam was responsible for the botnet havoc. The student and two others pled guilty and say they’re sorry.

ACCESS GRANTED

“If you feed the beast, that beast will destroy you,” Palihapitiya advised his audience. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, [but] misinformation, mistruth.”

—Facebook’s former head of user growth, Chamath Palihapitiya, recently offered a contrite and frightening account of what the company has built. David Meyer has a nice summary of his remarks.

ONE MORE THING

The best holiday movie ever? It’s decided. Wonderful holiday classics include It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, but some (including me) believe the best of the bunch is a little action film called Die Hard. Objectors have claimed Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie but now a prominent head of state has settled the question. Thanks, Justin Trudeau, and Ho ho ho!